In article <3a5a3a2d@news.povray.org>, "Rune" <run### [at] inamecom> 
wrote:

> AFAIK meshes, bicubic patches and perhaps iso-surfaces can be transformed
> nonlinearly. Or they could if there was functions in POV-ray that was
> designed to do this...

You can apply non-linear transformations to isosurfaces by modifying 
their functions. Bicubic patches, height fields, meshes, and other 
tesselated objects could also be deformed fairly easily without changing 
the rendering method very much, but you would have to make fairly major 
additions to the code.(I once made an attempt at deformable meshes, but 
failed completely)


> I suggest that we begin to think of the possibilities of implementing 
> such functions. I personally believe that it could improve POV-Ray 
> significantly in some of the areas where it is currently not as 
> powerful as many other renderers.

You're a little late...Wlodzimierz ABX Skiba has already been working on 
a deform patch, which apparently can work on all objects. Also, Warp is 
working on a tesselation patch that could be used to do similar things. 
All of this was discussed, including the possibility of using warps. 
Look around in povray.unofficial.patches, it was fairly recent.


> But more complicated ways of deforming may be useful. I have thought of a
> feature that would deform objects by several user-specified regular
> transforms, each weighted by a 3D field in space.
...snip...

I think it would be better to define deformations with a warp, and 
implement a new warp that does this. I think it would be a good idea to 
keep a single syntax for deforming both objects and textures.

-- 
Christopher James Huff
Personal: chr### [at] maccom, http://homepage.mac.com/chrishuff/
TAG: chr### [at] tagpovrayorg, http://tag.povray.org/

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